Contact:
Nadia Mustafa, mustafa.nadia@gmail.com, 917-701-3182
Life science leaders discuss plans for 'The Link' and 'The Blueprint'
(SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.) May 3, 2011 – The Personalized Health Project (PHP) held a "take action" summit last week with prominent leaders in the life sciences to address gaps occurring between new discoveries in science and their implementation for patients and people. Sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the meeting gathered together about 45 leaders from science, business, investors, government, the media, global health, patient advocacy groups, the wellness movement and "Health 2.0."
Details of the meeting and the PHP are on the new PHP website: http://www.PHProj.com
"A new era of healthcare, driven by new ideas and technologies, is poised to shift the emphasis on individuals staying healthy as much as on treating the sick," said PHP organizer David Ewing Duncan. "This new era, however, is being impeded by outdated notions and processes that can and should be fixed."
The meeting was triggered by the release of a study published last January by the Kauffman Foundation titled: "The Personalized Health Project: Identifying the gaps between discovery and application in the life sciences, and proposed solutions."
The paper identifies 11 barriers that are preventing the adoption of new technologies, processes and discoveries in healthcare; a universe of ideas and proposals that have been proposed to remove the barriers; and action plans to accelerate the adoption of a healthcare system that is based as much on prediction and prevention of disease as it is on treating illness. The study also explores the effect of new technologies, such as genomics in terms of ethics, law, politics and the impact on society.
An expert panel of 36 leaders in life sciences and related fields contributed to and reviewed the 82-page paper, which was accompanied by a two-page "Personalized Health Manifesto" endorsed by the expert panel and others. Read the manifesto, the list of endorsees, as well as the long paper.
The summit featured short talks and presentations on "gaps," solutions and action proposals from Harvard geneticist George Church; venture capitalist Brook Byers; wellness doctor Dean Ornish; White House science and technology advisor Michael Stebbins; Cleveland Clinic's Charis Eng; Wired Magazine's Thomas Goetz; global health expert Sir Richard Feachem; and many more.
"The PHP effort is a vital contributor to putting our biomedical house in order," said Frank Douglas, MD, PhD, CEO of the Austen BioInnovation Institute and a co-author of the PHP study. "It is time that we move aggressively to implement the wealth of new knowledge and science that has been created in the recent years to make a real difference for individuals who are sick and those who are still healthy."
Participants discussed three "action proposals":
The Link: a virtual, community-based map that catalogues and links up personalized health projects, entrepreneurs, products, tests, labs, investors and other facets. (Learn More).
The Blueprint: a web-based master plan for accelerating a collective personalized health agenda. (Learn More).
The Fund for Human Integration: an idea for creating a public-private fund to invest in personalized health projects that are focused on the needs of patients and clinicians. (Learn More).
The summit was sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation and Wells Fargo; meeting co-organizers were the Kauffman Foundation, the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) at the University of California at San Francisco, the P4 Institute, Cleveland Clinic Genomic Medicine Institute, the Personalized Medicine Coalition and the Center for Life Science Policy, UC Berkeley.
About the Personalized Health Project:
The PHP is an exploratory effort by a group of life science leaders – scientists, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, investors, policy experts, patient advocates, journalists and others – who believe that a concerted effort is needed to transform the rash of new discoveries and technologies in biomedicine into practical applications.
